Hapymaher Tester’s Corner #2

Well, probably not. But that’s kind of how Hapymaher felt to me. Because sweet jumpin’ jelly beans was this a long game. I had thought that Sorcery Jokers had a complicated plot structure but Inception-esque games definitely take the cake. I apologize for doubting them.

Hapymaher combines two major themes and builds a massive tale of a truckload of emotional elements. Trauma; romance; tragedy; regret; loss; the list goes on. All of these are espoused in this VN which keeps at its core two ideas: Alice in Wonderland, and dreams vs reality.

It’s no understatement to say that Hapymaher draws a lot of inspiration from Alice in Wonderland; even the dream aspect alludes to many of the book’s messages. With its colorful costumes and excellent storytelling, it does its inspirations justice.

But testing this game… hoo, boy. If I could just post the log of the conversations we all had trying to make head or tails of some of the initial stuff in this game before it got to you, precious reader, it would take up a script possibly longer than the game itself. Which doesn’t mean anything other than that with a game this long there are gonna be some bits that are a little crazy.

For example, if I could go back in time a few years and tell myself that I’d be having a discussion with colleagues over why the imagery is out of sync with the text with regards to…certain fluids and their placement on a body, I’d probably laugh until I threw up or passed out. Yet, thanks to Hapymaher, here I am. And I would’ve been right.

Hapymaher is a great example of why collaboration is so important when preparing something of this size for mass consumption. No one individual will have all the answers to how something reads best nor will one person catch every little thing that keeps a VN from being as best as we can make it. And Hapymaher certainly presented more than its fair share of, “OK, what the crap is…oh come on, that CG doesn’t even show what that’s claiming!”

Anatomical impossibilities aside, testing Hapymaher was a challenge for sure but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Possibly the satisfaction of a job well done is proportional to the challenge in completing said job, but also because Hapymaher was a genuinely good game despite/because of how emotional I got reading it. Definitely worth the playthrough, and be sure to remember that the Cheshire Cat was never the true villain….